| Painting is the most beautiful of all
arts. In it, all sensations are condensed; contemplating it, everyone can
create a story at the will of his imagination and—with a single
glance—have his soul invaded by the most profound recollections; no
effort of memory, everything is summed up in one instant. A complete art
which sums up all the others and completes them. Like music, it acts on
the soul through the intermediary of the senses: harmonious colors
correspond to the harmonies of sound. But in painting a unity is obtained
which is not possible in music, where the accords follow one another, so
that the judgment experiences a continuous fatigue if it wants to reunite
the end with the beginning. The ear is actually a sense inferior to the
eye. The hearing can only grasp a single sound at a time, whereas the
sight takes in everything and simultaneously simplifies it at will.
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), French artist
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